


the turning of the road

by Damkianna



Category: Circle of Iron | The Silent Flute (1978)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Extra Treat, Love Confessions, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Post-Canon, Spells & Enchantments, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24098404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: "Enough," Cord bit out. "What do you want of me?"The mage laughed, bright, amused. "Enough? Oh, not nearly enough," he said. "Not at all."
Relationships: Cord/The Blind Man (Circle of Iron)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 10
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	the turning of the road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galerian_ash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galerian_ash/gifts).



> ♥

"Enough," Cord bit out. "What do you want of me?"

The mage laughed, bright, amused. "Enough? Oh, not nearly enough," he said. "Not at all." He circled Cord with a thoughtful, assessing sort of look on his face, and the grim dull nothing that surrounded them was featureless, but the mage's robes, his jewelry, his hair, were visualized in exquisite detail.

Because of course he was the sort of man to lavish such attention on himself, when he could not be bothered with the rest of the world.

The only strange thing about him was that alongside all his finery, he wore upon one wrist what seemed to be no more than braided twine, braided twine and a handful of odd dark stones bound together by it. Peculiar, that he should have made the self with which he now plagued Cord wear such a thing.

"Why," the mage added, "we've barely even begun. Surely you don't think I brought you here just to talk to you?"

"You didn't bring me here at all," Cord said. "This is a dream."

"Well, yes," the mage conceded. "But I have lent it purpose, solidity, form. I have made it as good as real, and you will remember all you see and hear, all that happens within it, as though it _were_ real. No small trick, I assure you."

"And what is it you hope to achieve with this— _large_ trick, then?" Cord said, unmoved.

The mage smiled. "I wish for you to join me. Is that so wrong? I wish for you to join me, and achieve your true potential."

Cord managed not to laugh, but his mouth twisted. He felt amusement, a vague soft pity. What did this man know about potential? This man, who came to entreat _Cord_ in dreams, when the blind man was not two strides away and sleeping likewise. What fool would look to Cord for anything, when there was the blind man? The blind man, who was wiser, and stronger, and more clever; from whom Cord still had so much to learn.

"You didn't win the medallion, at the competition," the mage said.

Cord went still. That had been so long ago it almost felt as if it had happened to another, and not to him. And if this mage wanted that Cord, the Cord who had struck Morthon again and again even after he had fallen, not understanding why it was wrong—

"You didn't win the medallion, and yet you are the one who reached Zetan, and looked into the book. You alone." The mage shook his head, marveling. "What a wondrous feat! And yet you wander the wilderness, with no companion but a blind man. You haven't even returned to the city to celebrate, to tell of what you've learned—or to withhold it. Only as much as your competitors deserve, hm?"

Cord swallowed, and let his eyes fall shut. Or—the eyes he had here, within his own mind as he slept.

There was a time when he would have agreed with those words, would have warmed himself on the long journey to find Zetan by imagining as much: how men who had scorned him would beg him for even a scrap of his wisdom, how he would laugh and refuse them, how whatever profound understanding Zetan's book had to give would remain his and his alone.

He knew better now. The struggle wasn't to confine enlightment, but the reverse; there were few other gifts so impossibly hard to give, so desperately needed and so painfully difficult to share, even when you felt yourself possessed of more than you deserved. Food, gold, land—these things could be passed hand to hand, traded freely, bestowed readily upon the needy where the will existed to make it so. But enlightenment was a different beast. A path all must tread for themselves, that changed with each new pair of feet that set themselves upon it, and the journey itself the only destination—

Cord found himself near to smiling. His own sleeping mind could ramble with almost as much eloquence as the blind man, it seemed.

"Come," the mage was saying, coaxing. "Come, think. Think on all that might be yours, if only you were to reach for it. There are many men now who would honor you, who would kneel before you—who could be _made_ to kneel before you, if you wished it. Why not reap the rewards of all you have accomplished?"

Cord stared at the mage in bafflement, and shook his head—not even to refuse, simply because there were no words, because he did not know what else to do. He understood, distantly, what the mage meant; and yet at the same time it was so strange to him now, so bewildering. How could the mage not see how meaningless it was? What use was it to Cord to be knelt to? What merit was there in forcing someone to give to you what they would not have given if they had the choice? How little it was, how very little, that Cord had accomplished—if anything, the thing he had accomplished was to come to an understanding of how little he had accomplished, and it was an understanding the mage seemed not to share.

"And what have you to do with it?" Cord said at last, because of all the things that made no sense here, that was the simplest to put forth as a question. "I'm a stranger to you. What does it matter how I choose to live?"

"Why, a king must have a court mage," the mage said, with a smile. "I could be of great use to you. You doubt my power?"

Cord looked at him. "I doubt your power can give me what I wish most to have," he said after a moment, softly.

The mage tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. "Well, I suppose it would be foolish to take my word for it," he murmured. "And if this dream does not serve as proof enough, then perhaps a clearer demonstration is in order?"

He moved his hand, one way and then another, with his fingers twisted strangely; he spoke a word, and Cord heard it but could not have repeated it, could not say which sounds had made it up or how the mage's mouth had produced them.

And then the nothingness that had been around them bled away, and they were somewhere else.

It couldn't be real. But it felt real. There was rough sandstone beneath the bare soles of Cord's feet, and hot air still and close around him, and bright sun falling here and there around him. Wherever it could reach, within the vast vaulted hall in which Cord and the mage now stood. One of the great ruins that stood within the city, Cord grasped within a moment, like the arena in which the contest was held—but reclaimed, the towering walls shored up by fortifications, painted with a mark Cord did not recognize: red, within a ragged circle of gray.

The hall was half-filled with people, though none of them seemed to see Cord or the mage standing there alongside them. There were some ranged along the far walls, standing; many with spears, javelins, not just idly employed but guards, at attention. The ones who were not guards formed an uneven line, narrowing as it progressed toward the front of the hall, and they were—they looked stooped, cowed, some sunk upon their knees. At the head of the line, they crawled, and were pushed along by the guards there with impatient feet.

In order that they might present themselves to the man who sat in the great hewn throne at the head of the hall.

And Cord looked with dread already tightening his throat, though he couldn't have known what he would find, and saw himself.

Himself. Dressed much as he had been on the long-ago day of the contest, but with armor, now, a chestplate like the one Morthon had worn, and—that was the symbol on the wall, Cord understood distantly. Red, for his stone, his color, on the day of the contest. And gray—silver—for the medallion.

The other Cord sat sprawled easily upon the throne, knees akimbo, arms propped upon the sides of it. But it was an ease born of disdain, arrogance, not comfort or contentment. The other Cord's eyes were hard, his face sharply lined, his jaw tight, his mouth flat. He looked upon the people who crawled before him without warmth or pity; he assessed them, though Cord could not guess what it was he looked for, and then bit out orders to the guards nearest him, and they were taken away to one side or the other, struck without hesitation if they cried out or wept or pleaded.

Cord's gut churned. He could not breathe. He could not look away.

"What is this?" he heard himself say.

"The universe is a much vaster and more tangled thing than you understand," said the mage grandly. "Our world is only one among many, among uncountable hordes; and each of them stands divided from the others by the thinnest of veils. In one, a man comes to a crossroads and turns left—in another, right. In one, he fights and kills his opponent. In another, he is the one who falls to the sand and never rises."

"Ours is one," Cord said. "And this is another."

"Just so!" the mage agreed, seeming pleased to be understood. "Here, see: in this place, you won your match that day. It could not be argued, for all that some misliked your tactics, and the medallion was yours. You went and sought Zetan, and killed him, and burned his book, and would tell no one what you had read in it."

Cord let his eyes fall shut. His hands, his face, felt cold.

He had not followed Morthon, then, in this world. His path had been altered, somehow, and—

Which was worse? That he should never have happened across the blind man at all, or that he should have done it but gone on, not understanding what he left behind him? That, in a world where he had won the medallion, where he felt he lacked nothing, he had not believed he had anything to learn from the blind man, and had kept on his way.

How had he prevailed against the challenges he must have faced? Cord could hardly imagine it. But then—

But then there must be further worlds still where he had not. Hundreds, thousands; and it was only that the mage had managed to find the lone one in which instead he had succeeded.

And it would have made all that was harsh in him worse, to suffer the journey alone—alone, and bereft of even the glimmers of understanding that had been given to him by the blind man. Without even the sound of the silent flute in his ears; without the awareness of companionship to give him strength, but instead facing all the world alone.

And, worst of all, prevailing by it. That would have decided him, no doubt. The victory his and his alone, the proof at last that he needed no one and nothing, that he stood above all others—

"Here," the mage was saying, "you are a warlord, a king. Many men fight at your command; you rule the great city, and all the land around it, and none remain who do not know your name and fear it. You mean to conquer the world, though many here would say you already have—but your hordes have not yet seen what lies beyond the mountains to the north, the desert to the south, and if there are men there, you have decided, they too must fall on their knees before you."

He spoke quickly, warmly. It made him glad, Cord perceived, to say these things, to think of them.

He did not understand. But Cord opened his eyes and looked upon his own face, and knew.

He had always known he lacked something. He had felt it within himself, a wordless hunger, a needing he could not satisfy. He'd believed once that winning the contest, earning the medallion, would fix it; the respect of other men, their admiring eyes upon him, their acknowledgment that he was strong and clever and worthy. Once he had that, he had thought, he would be happy.

Once he had found Zetan, he would be happy. Once he had looked into the book and become wise, he would be happy. Once he returned, and his feats were known—greater respect, greater admiration. Then, then, he would be happy.

It was the blind man who had saved Cord from that endless, mindless seeking. It was the blind man who had helped Cord begin to understand that all he needed was within himself; that if he could not find balance, peace, joy, contained in himself, he would never find it in what was given him by others—not in wealth, not in land, not in obeisance. He had learned just enough that when he had looked in Zetan's book, he had, in a moment's perfect clarity, grasped the lesson, and laughed.

But the other Cord had not. The other Cord had driven himself on alone, and found Zetan. Hadn't had even as much restraint as Cord had learned; hadn't held back, even when he believed Zetan meant to strike him. Had killed Zetan, and who knew how many others, within those bountiful gardens. And to look in the book, and see the answer he sought but be unable to comprehend it—

Of course it had enraged him. Because the other Cord had spent so much time, so much effort, had prevailed against so much, to reach it—had believed, desperately, that this would be the thing that made him feel whole, that took away that terrible endless lacking within him.

But it hadn't. And in his fury and his despair, he had burned the book and left.

To come back, and find himself looked at with awe, despite the hollowness that remained within him—that would only have made it worse. Cord could almost see it in his other self's face, could almost trace the path he must have walked: the bitterness that had eaten away at him, the cold meaninglessness he perceived wherever he looked, the shadow of futility overwhelming, all-consuming.

The other Cord didn't even know what it was he could not find. He only felt the ache of its absence. He had tried to fill it with battle, and had become a warlord; he had tried to fill it with gold, and had become a king. He had tried to fill it with power, and had become a tyrant. And now here he sat, upon a throne men would have killed for, wanting for no material need, deciding the fates of hundreds with a motion of his hand—and Cord wanted to weep for him, for the yawning empty nothingness that must have clawed away almost all that was left of him.

"Well?" the mage said.

Cord blinked his hot stinging eyes, sickened, and swallowed. "This is what you would have of me? This is what you ask me to become?" He shook his head, and laughed, hoarse, half-strangled. As if he could bear to walk into such a trap! A pit, dug deep, lined with spikes, from which he could not hope to free himself—and this mage wanted him to step into it with his eyes wide open.

The mage stared at him, startled, and then frowned. "Surely this is as much as any man could wish for," he said. "What more do you desire?"

Cord laughed again, helpless, in the face of all the words he did not have to explain it—in the sad, certain knowledge that even if he had found such words and used them, the mage would not have understood them. "Enough," he said. "I don't wish to see any more. Take me back to my dreams, let me wake. I want no part of this."

The mage's brows drew together more sharply still, and a flash of hot anger crossed his face and then was smoothed away.

"Come, be reasonable," he said coaxingly. "Consider all that might be yours, if you would only reach out and take it—"

"What does it matter?" Cord demanded. "What has any of this to do with you?"

And then he heard his own question, heard it and thought of the things the mage had said to him— _why, a king must have a court mage_ —and looked at his other self again. Looked at his other self, and then past him; for, standing beside the throne at the other Cord's shoulder, there was a man who stood tall, in fine robes and many gleaming jewels, with his hair woven up in braids, and it was the mage.

"You see?" said the mage, who must have followed his gaze, who must have seen his abrupt understanding in his face. "We both may have all that we wish and more, if you'll only make the sensible decision." He paused, and tilted his head. "What is it that dismays you? Hm? What is it? You fear leaving that blind man of yours behind to wander the wilds without a companion?"

Cord nearly laughed again. He couldn't help it. So close to one truth among many—that he didn't wish to leave the blind man, not ever, not while breath remained in him—and yet so far, for who could be so foolish as to wish such a thing for the blind man's sake?

It was not the blind man who had anything to fear from a life left wandering alone.

And yet perhaps that, at least, was a reason the mage would understand.

"I will never leave the blind man behind," Cord said aloud, "that much is true."

The mage's mouth twisted.

"Foolishness," he said. "Utter foolishness! As if it makes the least difference—I'll show you. I'll _show_ you," and he moved his hands again, spoke a new word, and the hall, the throne, the other Cord, blurred and were gone.

"No," Cord said, but too softly and too late: the world was already remaking itself around them.

As if he needed to be shown, as if he hadn't known already exactly what he would see. For, sure enough, the mage had taken them out into a forest, beside a wide slow river, and none other than the blind man was walking there.

The bell fastened upon his toe jingled, softly, at every other step. He had just crossed that river, he must have; his clothing, his cloak, were wet up to the waist, and he was still squeezing at the edges of them absently with one hand, drips sluicing from his knuckles. In the other hand was his flute, held like a staff, as it so often was.

His expression was mild, calm. His gait was unhurried. His unseeing eyes were fixed steadily somewhere in the middle distance. It was a fine, pleasant day to be walking by a river. He looked well. He looked at peace.

Cord looked away.

"You see?" the mage was insisting. "It matters not at all to him, Cord. He doesn't care what you do, and never will. It is _I_ who have need of you. All those to whom you could be king, and lord, and master, whose will and strength and purpose could be bent to serve your own—and you would leave them without a guiding hand, for the sake of a man who wants nothing from you at all?"

Cord flinched from the truth laid bare, flinched and covered his face with his hand; a truth that was not quite the one the mage thought himself to be speaking, but a truth nevertheless. "Take us back," he said, hoarse, breathless. "Take us _back_ ," and within an instant the mage had done it—no doubt believing he had won his point, and that Cord wished to look again upon all that might be his.

Instead, once they had settled into place again within the vast stone hall, Cord strode away from the mage and toward himself, where he lounged in such cold silent despair upon that great throne. "Cord!" he shouted, though it was strange beyond words to call his own name.

"What are you doing?" the mage said, behind him. "He cannot see you, he cannot hear you. Stop this."

Perhaps it was so. But the mage had also said, before: _the thinnest of veils_.

The other Cord didn't move. Cord cried out louder, drawing closer, and then passed through a guard as though he were not there, and reached the side of the throne. He raised a hand to it, and that, too, passed through the stone—but there had to be a way. There had to.

He closed his eyes, and thought of the blind man. He drew a long slow breath, and let it pass from him again. He thought of Zetan's book. He faced a mirror again, now: was he the Cord who looked into it, or the Cord who was reflected? Did it matter? On a deeper level, within themselves, they were the same; they were connected. They were both Cord.

He heard, as if in the far distance, soft sweet notes, like those of a flute. He breathed in again, and reached out, and his fingertips grazed the cool hard stone in front of him, and he said, "Cord."

The other Cord looked up. His eyes went wide.

"The blind man," Cord said to him, soft, urgent. "Find the blind man. You must find the blind man—"

The mage grabbed Cord by the arm, harsh—beyond the other Cord, the other version of the mage had turned, and was staring, too.

"The blind man," Cord repeated, and he could see his own brow crease in wonder, curiosity, and felt a sharp satisfaction; that was all it would take. He knew himself, and the words of so strange a vision would not leave him in peace. The other Cord might heed the voice of the other mage for a time, but sooner or later he would act. The hunger for an answer, the hope that this at last might be the thing that filled the hollow space within himself, would drive him to it.

Cord grinned at his other self, pleased. And the mage bit out an oath, at his shoulder, and dug his fingers into Cord's wrist, and then spat another of those strange magical words.

The hall was gone. Cord was falling, or spinning, or hung upside down; perhaps all three at once. The mage had never moved them between worlds with such furious haste before, and Cord could no longer tell which way was up or down, unmoored entirely.

He stumbled, and landed on his knees in—ah. In the familiar dark nothing, the blank dream-space from which the mage had first taken him.

"What have you done?" the mage cried. He still had Cord by the wrist, the arm, and shook him hard, struck him full across the face. "What have you done? You fool! You _fool_. The blind man has no need of you, he has no _use_ for you—"

Cord smiled up at him, and did not try to pull free. "You think you have told me, shown me, anything I did not know?"

The mage fell silent, staring at him.

"You think I believed the blind man had _need_ of me, until you proved otherwise?" Cord laughed, the barest breath through his nose; he could not help it. "If I have learned nothing else, mage, I have learned myself. I know what I am, and what I am not. I knew already what might have become of me, without the blind man's lessons to guide me onto another road. And I knew already that there is nothing I have that the blind man wants, nothing I can offer him that he would choose to accept."

"You are as mad as he is," the mage said, almost wonderingly. And then his face twisted in anger, and he moved, as if to aim a heavy blow at Cord's chest.

He didn't touch Cord, not this time. But it didn't matter. He had made this dream-space, he held Cord within it, and it did as he bade: Cord was struck so hard he could not breathe, so hard he reeled to the side—

—and was caught, inexplicably, by a pair of strong steady arms that were not the mage's.

"Cord," the blind man said, and there was a strange breathless edge in that steady voice. "Cord—"

"What?" Cord said, staring up at him, bewildered, shivering. It was—he was back again in a world he recognized, the world in which he had gone to sleep; except that now it was nearly dawn, the sky dim and rosy overhead, the stars only just beginning to wink out one at a time. "I—what happened?"

"You slept, and wouldn't wake," the blind man said, and lifted him a little, curled an arm more securely beneath his shoulders.

He needed to stand, he thought. He needed to get out of the blind man's arms. But his legs were weak and shaking, and he could not seem to work out how to make them do as he wished.

"My cloak," he said dazedly, and tried to feel about on the ground for it; it had been there when he had fallen asleep, he knew.

The blind man found it first, with the arm that was not beneath Cord, and moved as if to cover him with it.

"No, no," Cord said, and reached for it, felt around the edges of it. And, just as he had suspected, tucked within one corner of it and bound there, was a loop of something solid: braided twine, and a handful of smooth dark stones, just like the bracelet the mage had worn in the dream.

He tore it free with trembling fingers, tore it free and threw it out into the grass, and it fell far enough away that he did not hear it land.

"Cord," the blind man said.

"There was a mage," Cord told him. "He found my mind while I slept. He was—he wanted me to—" He stopped, and closed his eyes, and shook his head. It was all still so clear in his head, and yet his tongue felt clumsy, his body weak and dizzy. "For each of our choices, each thing that happens, there is a world where it goes the other way. He took me to one of them. He showed me who I was, when I—when you were not there. When I didn't know you, and never had."

A small unhappy line appeared between the blind man's brows.

"I was a king," Cord said, and then stopped again and bit at his mouth, because that hadn't come out right at all. "I was a king, I was—I was wretched, I was the poorest man in the world."

The blind man seemed to consider this for a moment; and then his mouth slanted at one corner. "That bad, hmm?"

"Worse," Cord agreed. "The mage seemed to think that I would want to be that man, once I had seen it. That I would want to be that man, and let him help make me so, and leave you."

"Did he?"

"Yes," Cord said, and laughed, because here, now, in the dim light of dawn, in the world that was his own, it felt like the rankest nonsense—not like a fate that might reach out and take hold of him, but far away, unreal, hopelessly improbable. "He didn't understand anything. He didn't understand all that I've learned from you, all that I have yet to learn. He didn't understand that I'd rather die than leave you."

It was easy to say, a simple truth like any other. He didn't hesitate.

Surely the blind man already knew, anyway. He was wise, he was clever; he saw through Cord like clear water and always had, in the ways that mattered, for all that he was blind.

The blind man held very still, and did not let go of Cord. "Is that so?" he said, soft.

"He thought I feared to do it," Cord elaborated readily. "He thought—I suppose he thought I felt I owed you something for your help in reaching Zetan, or that I believed myself obligated to care for a blind man. It's so much simpler than that. It's just that there's nowhere else I want to be, if you are not there. But he didn't know that."

"What a fool he must have felt like," the blind man murmured wryly after a moment, "once you had explained it to him."

Cord let his eyes fall shut. "He showed me you, too," he made himself say.

The blind man was silent.

"In that world, where we had never met each other—he showed me you." Cord couldn't help but smile, just a little, at the memory: bittersweet, for him, and yet it was a pleasure to think of the blind man on a fine day, content, untouched even by all that the other Cord had done. "You were the same, of course."

"I wasn't," the blind man said.

Cord blinked up at him.

"I wasn't the same," the blind man said.

Cord frowned, dimly bewildered, and thought back to the vision, to the blind man as he had appeared within it. "I—your clothes were the same," he said aloud, working his way through it a bit at a time. "You wore your bell, you held your flute. You stood the same way, you walked the same way. You were neither older nor younger. There was no difference."

"But there must have been," the blind man said. "You said it was a world where I had never known you. So: there, I was alone."

Cord stared at him, and did not know what to say.

And the blind man held him there a moment longer, within the circle of one arm, with his knees upon the grass; and then he reached up, and touched Cord's face with his hand, and Cord's heart began to pound.

"You—played your flute to me," he blurted. He had thought he had heard music, there, as he had stood and breathed and tried to speak to the other Cord. But he'd believed it was only in his mind.

The blind man smiled. "Yes," he said, low, and tilted his head, and ran his thumb along the line of Cord's jaw. "And you heard it."

Cord swallowed hard. "I always hear it."

And the blind man let out a soft slow breath, and leaned in, until their foreheads touched. "I have always loved to play it," he said very quietly. "But for a long, long time, there was never anyone listening."

Impossible. Impossible, surely, that the blind man had ever—

Had ever felt a lack. Had ever felt a hollow place, an absence he could not fill himself, no matter how he tried.

Cord squeezed his eyes shut. "You will never be alone again," he dared to say, "if you do not wish it," and he reached up with one unsteady hand and touched the blind man's cheek, his mouth; surged up out of the blind man's grasp, with all the strength that was left to him, and kissed him.

The blind man simply moved with it, for a moment, as was his way: absorbed it, allowed it, without resistance or intent, as if merely waiting to see what would come of it. And then he drew in a breath against Cord's lips, and made a small pleased sound—caught Cord up against him, and held him there, and returned the kiss, with all the strength and thoroughness and care with which he did everything.

"Perhaps I had better find this mage of yours," he said against Cord's cheek, when he had eased away at last, "if only to give him a gift in thanks."

And Cord laughed, and shook his head, pressed his temple to the blind man's and thought of that other Cord and was grateful not to be a king or a wise man; was grateful to be only himself, just as he was, with the blind man in his arms.


End file.
